A new study has claimed that more than one-third of populations worldwide may have low levels of vitamin D.
Principal investigator, Dr. Kristina Hoffmann of the Mannheim Institute of Public Health (MIPH), Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University said that the strength of their study is that they used strict inclusion criteria to filter and compare data, using consistent values for 25(OH)D.
Hoffmann said that although they found a high degree of variability between reports of vitamin D status at the population level, more than one-third of the studies reviewed reported mean serum 25(OH)D values below 50 nmol/l.
The new systematic review used continuous values for 25(OH)D to improve comparisons.
The result has been published in the British Journal of Nutrition.